Last week I helped one of our wonderful clients create a presentation for a webinar she was giving on the subject of retention.

She’d written some dynamic words that encapsulated her beliefs. We had a healthy conversation around some of her ideas and theories and we enjoyed one another’s viewpoints.

This whole process made me think and reflect on our own retention here at Home, and how things have changed somewhat recently. Bizarrely, we have said goodbye to quite a few Homies. In the past, I would have taken the departure of each of them personally – as that’s just how I am. But with each departure, I didn’t feel like that. Instead I wished them luck, moved forward and said to myself under my breath… “It’s not all about you Carol!”

People have left us for a mixture of reasons – one to set up their own consultancy thing, one said “I can’t cope with the lack of structure in my day!” and another said “I’ve fallen out with agency life Carol”. We’ve come full circle with another Homie who left us to become a masseuse and now comes back once a month to give us seated chair massages. We’ve had a member of staff who used their Home development fund (£750) to take floristry evening classes, she loved it so much she left Home to pursue it as a career. How amazing is that? Using the Home development fund as a self-selection/reflection/deselection tool… a stroke of genius.

I want people who join Home to be themselves. It’s important that the people who work here, want to be here. I want them to come to work and own the projects they work on and to throw themselves into work with gay abandon (gay in the old sense of the word, honest). These are the team members that get the most out of the experience. Invariably they act like they own part of the business, and eventually they probably will. If you’ve fallen out of love with us, or the city or the industry, then it’s right to go and find what brings you joy. Life is way too short to be miserable at work.

I can’t remember who said it to me years ago, but someone said “Carol, always employ people smarter than yourself” I personally learn a lot from our wonderful Homies, not just about design, design thinking, strategy, or social media, but about life itself. One of the team is my own personal “social media feistiness filter” and by gosh do I need her, I think Trump could do with one too!

Finally, in the same week I was creating the retention presentation, Martin (my business partner) found the old brand document we created in 2004, when we changed our name from Bi-design to Home. We’ve moved on somewhat from there but the essence of what we’re all about still sticks…

 

“At the heart of Home are passionate, warm people, who enjoy creating intelligent, striking, strategic design solutions.”

 

Alongside the document was a montage of the team. There were only 11 of us at the time, and I was blown away to realise that 8 are still with us today… we must be doing something right!

Rock on the Home Lifers!

homies of old